Harvard Athletics Centralizes Control Rooms with NDI® and Existing Network

It was NewTek’s new NDI® (Network Device Interface) technology that proved to be the game-changer…

“A better world” when it comes to sports production for universities and colleges is to have one control room, move nothing around, and yet be able to cover sports at any venue on the campus. With baseband equipment that’s a practical impossibility. Even the new IP capabilities can have their limitations – many IP solutions require fiber or infrastructure of 10Gb or better.

Imry Halevi, Harvard University Athletics’ Director of Multimedia and Production, found that a second control room rather than potentially miles of fiber was a realistic solution for the budget. The possibility is made practical with NewTek’s NDI® technology for transmitting a best-possible-quality-per-available-bandwidth media stream on standard 1GB Ethernet networks. Harvard invested in extending such networking across its facilities, and Halevi was given the go-ahead to make use of it in setting up a new control room to cover basketball, soccer, swimming, water polo, and more.

An existing control room served football and hockey. As it turned out, Halevi was able to bring in the work such that production crews are able to produce any of the sports from either control room, allowing for more sporting events to be covered, even when events are simultaneous. The student crews will be producing upwards of 275 live broadcasts for outlets that will include the Ivy League Network, ESPN3, and NESN regional sports network.